IN MEMORIAM: The Sioux at Wounded Knee 1890
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Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins – Greg_L-W.
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IN MEMORIAM:
The Sioux at Wounded Knee 29-Dec-1890
29-Dec-2014 marks the 124th. anniversary of the massacre of The Lakota Sioux under Chief Big Foot of The Miniconjou Sioux at Wounded Knee, less than 2 weeks after the murder of Sitting Bull by US Cavalry at Standing Rock Reservation.
Similarly 29-Nov-2014 was the 150th. anniversary of the massacre of 1864, by the Militia of Colonel John Chivington, of a defenceless Cheyenne and an Arapaho villages at Sand Creek (Soldier Blue portrays this most aptly and the song by the native American Indian Buffy Saint Marie says it all! CLICK HERE her rendering of ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee‘ is spectacular!).
CLICK HERE was this a rehearsal for Mai Lai or just an indication of the value Politicians and the military place upon Treaties? Consider the corrupt basis of The EU and the clear lack of meaningful democracy – A massacre of liberty & democracy, freedom & justice by stealth!
The Irish may care to learn from the wisdom of the Indigenous peoples of America – Never trust a treaty signed against one’s better instincts, against one’s will and sold to such an extent that they were prepared to lie.
Sadly this so very much applies to virtually ALL aspects of the relationship these United Kingdoms have with The EU – wherein our own politicians and Snivil Cervants are OUR ENEMY within, as they have duped and betrayed us with monotonous regularity regarding The EU and have stolen our money to fund their own personal ambitions; Currently OUR politicians are stealing £53 Million + a day to fund the failed, corrupt, depraved and undemocratic EU scam.
Clearly a scam as all it provides is a blocking process for democracy and a rubber stamping process for the edicts of such bodies as WTI, WHO, CODEX, Davos, UN and the like who form the overarching global governance to whose tune the EU dances as it obfuscates democracyy, human rights, liberty, justice and trade – at an obscene and uneccessary cost.
The Cheyenne, The Arapaho, Sitting Bull, The Miniconjou, The Lakota and Big Foot had binding Treaty Agreements with a nascent super State seeking to increase its control, that too was with catastrophic consequences.
Some amongst The Irish will recall that John Major signed an agreement with The EU termed by The Sun newspaper on its banner front page as Game, Set & Match to Major yet it seems it was not valid since The EU have just arbitrarily overturned the Treaty – as did The Colorado Militia and the US 7th. Cavalry before them in creating their supra national state.
As does the EU, by deceit, stealth and betrayal salami slicing away our liberty and freedoms without any meaningful democratic input!.
It would seem that The EU is no respecter of agreements either and Ireland is to vote again to make it possible to claim they voted for their own demise as a Nation State! No massacre here just the death of democracy and self determination granted at great cost in 1922.
& to think that Declan Ganley AND the British Tory Party, The Farage Party and his odious allies in The EU The Pan EU Political Party Group in The EFD with their racism, anti Judaism, anti homosexuality, sham so called christianity and violent xenophobic hatreds based on country, class and creed – they are so stupid as to believe that The EU can be changed from within!
Sand Creek Colorado and Wounded Knee will hold no torch to the massacres and deaths that will result from the enforcement of The EU on a largely resistant peoples! As famine stalks the plains of EUrope due to the greed and stupidity of Politicians and as ‘The Wars of Disassociation’ become more determined!
“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
Details of The Wounded Knee Massacre:
The Massacre at Wounded Knee drew its cause from the US Government policy of forcing the indigenous peoples to live on reservations and forgo their itinerant life style following the herds across their territories. Forcing the people to live in a manner alien to their traditions, life style and needs.
The break down of indigenous culture led to a strong movement to restore their old ways led by the ‘Ghost Dancers’, seeking to restore the old ways and values, amongst the Sioux at Pine Ridge, which increasingly worried the Government.
On the 15-Dec-1890 the reservation police entered the Pine Ridge area, S.E. of Rapid City South Dakota, to try to arrest the Sioux Chief Sitting Bull – an incident that led to his death, greatly increasing the tension in the area.
The killing of Sitting Bull led to drafting in the US Army 7th. Cavalry who on the 29-Dec-1890 surrounded a group of the Ghost Dancers led by Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux Chief of the Miniconjou tribe of Sioux Plains Indians.
The cavalry surrounded them at their encampment/village at Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As this was taking place a fight started between one of the Sioux and a US soldier and a shot was fired.
The 7th. Cavalry then went on to an uncontrolled massacre of between 150 and 300 of the Sioux villagers, about half of the casualties were women and children. The cavalry recorded a mere 25 casualties!
The Massacre was originally passed off as a battle but was not only a tragedy but an undeniable and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed cavalry it is hardly plausible that Big Foot with old men, women and children being predominant amongst his villagers would have deliberately started any kind of battle!
It has been speculated by some historians that the massacre deliberately carried out by the 7th. Cavalry as revenge for the ignominy of their defeat at Little Big Horn in 1876.
Whatever the cause or trigger of the massacre it was the last major incident in the US Government’s eradication of the Plains Indians and a final step in the control and destruction of the indiginous peoples of America.
Let us remember not just those who died at Wounded Knee but the destruction of the entire culture of the indigenous peoples of North America.
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Regards,
Greg_L-W.
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Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
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“I have a great many rumors of a fight with Big Foot’s party but nothing authentic.”
–Brig. Gen. J. R. Brooke
This day 125 years ago… disarming Big Foot’s band led to bloody carnage. [4686 more words.]
Hi,
thanks for the further information, more of which can be found at:
http://armyatwoundedknee.com/
& also worthy of note is:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/knee.htm
I would opine that there is little doubt that this was an army massacre in todays context in view of the heavily armed and disciplined Military force brought against a group that contained so many women, old folk and children who were slaughtered indisciminately.
It os worthy of note that even at the time there was obvious oprobrium verging on revulsion in view that an enquiry was held.
The treatment of the indiginous peoples by the United States military of the day was not entirely different to that of Islamic Terrorist forces of today, merely a genocide carried out 125 years earlier.
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
Greg… Thank you for commenting. Your perspective is perhaps the most commonly held contemporary view of Wounded Knee. I recommend reading Greg Michno’s A Fate Worse Than Death to gain a better appreciation of how 19th Century Americans felt about the indigenous populations. Your comparison of the U.S. Military of that period to Islamic Terrorists is a very interesting take, and I would posit the inverse, in that the Apache, Comanche, and Sioux of the 1850s – 1880s were viewed by White Americans as the Al Qaeda or Daesh of their day. The military reaction to the “terrorists” of their day is not far from our modern day reaction to radical Islamic terrorism. It is all perspective.
Hi,
I would not disagree with your view – Other than to point out that as the invader the US was more akin to the position of Zionists in Palestine or Islamic Terrorists in existent nation states and that just as America’s position in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and the incitement of the claimed Arab Spring was/is morally and ethically wanting; so also was their position pertinent to the indiginous peoples of America whom they disposessed, conquered and mercilessly slaughtered, with little or no consideration of their humanity or rights.
The gung ho attitude of the front line in the US would seem too often to have suffered a disconect from their political masters and thus the diplomatic process of democracy.
Mai Lai was sadly all too predictable, based upon earlier wars, as was the cover-up and leniency of sentence and sanction of the perpetrators. An outcome that inclines to lead me to believe that the actions at Wounded Knee and earlier at Sand Creek were all too likely akin to indiciplined troops under poor command, as at Mai Lai.
I do appreciate that revisionist history is frequently the history as written by the victors – however I would contend that ethics are a consistent, regardless of any revisionist stance and the interpretation of the indiginous American’s position by the front line was as eroneous then as is the interpretation of Islamic extremists terrorism which in no way represents Islam or Muslims. In both instances the overly simplistic interpretation of a tiny minority risks alienation of the stable and peacable majority.
Contextualising may prove of interest through the reading of:
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
The Many Not The Few
The Washing Of The Spears
Defeat Into Victory
The Ministry Of Defeat
The Great Game
and of its day edition One of
W.S. Churchill’s River Wars
Regards,
Greg_L-W [GL-W]
Greg…
I would define revisionist history as 21st century ethicists applying modern day ethics to cultures of more than a century ago. It was another time, another culture. The native cultures in the Americas were nomadic tribes that certainly did not rise to the level of Westphalian Nation States. That was the standard by which any Europeans arriving in the Americas judged another power. Doesn’t matter how much history one studies, and I spend most of my leisure hours pouring through primary source documents from the later half of 19th century America, one can never truly understand how peoples of a bygone era viewed the world. As such, it is inappropriate, in my humble opinion, to pass judgment on a culture that we cannot hope to understand no matter how much we study. I would prefer to see ethicists apply themselves to the evils of today rather than passing judgment on the past. Study the past, learn from the past, apply ethics to today. The website you listed in your first comment, ArmyAtWoundedKnee.com, is my website. You can see my reading list on Wounded Knee at the following site: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31868991-sam?shelf=wounded-knee
Regards, Sam
Hi,
you will find there has been very little change in ethics relative to military slaughter, in civilised countries, during the last several 100 years.
It has never been considered acceptable in any reasonable definition of modern history for armed military to slaughter unarmed women, children and the elderly. The ill disciplined poorly led massacres of the indiginous peoples of America have not been replicated elsewhere within the time frame of American history other than Pol Pot, genocide in ex French colonies and Nazi Germany (including Westphalia!), and on occasion Viet Nam.
Sadly it has been an ethos of American military to denigrate their enemies to seek to justify attrocities – as with Gooks, Spics, Geeks, Wet Backs, Coons etc. that seemingly justified such massacres as Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Mai Lai and the like.
The ethics of the time were hardly portrayed by the pro slavery wars of Southern States of the Civil War, at a time long after the abolition of slavery had spread across the civilised world!
There seems to be an ethics lag in America, with its near institutionalised racism and contempt for the poor, the willingness of a large percentage of US white population to turn a blind eye to the slaughter rate of the barbarism of US gun laws and police and civilian murders of black victims – this SEEMS to be something of an extension of the barbarism that seems accepting of military massacres too readily passed off as circumstantial. Not to mention teh arms for drugs dealings of various Military such as Col. Oliver North and the apparent deals of seemingly the Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheyney commercial sindication, including the actions of George Bush both junior and senior and as far back as Prescott Bush!
There were also grave suspicions related to various massacres in El Salvadore, the downing of Pan Am flight 103 on 21-Dec-1988 at Lockerbie, and CIA abuse of Korean Airways leading to the downing of Korean Airways flight 902 off Kamchatka on 20-Apr-1978
I accept that with the use of British troops as mercinaries fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that there has been a shamefull fall in ethical standards yet even so when we knew of ONE killing of a prisoner by a Royal Marine Sargeant that individual was tried for murder and incacerated on a relatively length sentence. Rightly so.
America’s actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Viet Nam, Cuba and elsewhere have been spectacular failures; so also, I regret, have been those campaigns for Britain, where we followed America; in their unethical ambitions to shore up the US $ as a reserve currency of choice or sought control or influence of a land base.
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
Hi Sam,
thanks fot the heads up to the reading list:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31868991-sam?shelf=wounded-knee
Please do not think it is obduracy that may preclude me from reading all on the list, but rather lack of time!
I have read a fair bit of history, including that of America and have had the good fortune to visit a number of the locations noted in American history and that of India, Africa, Far East, Middle East, South America and naturally Europe, (including Britain ;-)).
History as a broad spectrum from Egyptian, Babilonian, Romano Greek, Libian, Germano Frankish, Silurian, Slavery, Moghul, Colonial and modern viz WWs I &II in Europe & Far East, anti slavery Civil War & Indian wars of America, Civil War of Spain etc.
The greater ones knowledge of such matters the more one appreciates the immense gaps in that knowledge!.
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
Hi,
a further example of denigration of their enemies, which I overlooked, was the fact that the name ‘Big Foot’ was given to Sitting Bull’s brother by US Military to denigrate him as his true name was, as I recall, Spotted Elk!
Regards,
Greg_L-W.